


keep your head

by brawler



Category: Dead Space (Video Games)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:55:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25659343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawler/pseuds/brawler
Summary: Carver thinks for a second to disengage his helmet, to look him in the eyes before he turns to walk away, but he can’t bear the thought. It reminds him of all the times he argued with Damara, how he could barely bring himself to look at her. It makes him angry, angry at himself, angry it had to come to this, angry that even here, now, he can’t man up and face the repercussions of what he’s done.
Relationships: John Carver/Isaac Clarke
Kudos: 16





	keep your head

The lights overhead stutter back to life. The smoke clears. The bitter, metallic scent of plasma discharge and gunfire dissipates. Carver approaches him, his visor shrouding his silhouette in a dull red light. He stands over him as he lies there crumpled on the floor, clinging to the shockpoint drive with what little strength he has left. His helmet’s been damaged and it sits disengaged in his suit, the occasional spark flickering out from the projector. His chest heaves and his gasps for air are interspersed between coughs that fling up blood and speckle the floor. It sounds terrible. Feeble. Carver doesn't think it'll last much longer.

Carver’s rifle drops to the ground as he watches him. The blood that seeps out from the various punctures in his suit pools and turns the surrounding brown material a dark shade of maroon. His RIG is beeping now, urgently trying to alert him of the blood loss. His last few reserves of somatic gel were not enough. 

Carver steps towards him, careful not to touch him as he bends down and retrieves the cylindrical device from his hands. He reaches for it as it’s pulled away from him, and Carver has to turn his head for a moment when he tries to raise himself up off the cold hard steel, falling when there’s no strength left for him to muster, hitting the floor with a whimper. 

Though Carver’s still wearing his helmet, he can see his eyes lock directly onto his own through the slits in his visor, and they’re desperate. Pleading. Begging, not for Carver to help him, but to stop what he plans to do. 

Carver thinks for a second to disengage his helmet, to look him in the eyes before he turns to walk away, but he can’t bear the thought. It reminds him of all the times he argued with Damara, how he could barely bring himself to look at her. It makes him angry, angry at himself, angry it had to come to this, angry that even here, now, he can’t man up and face the repercussions of what he’s done. He looks at the shockpoint drive in his hands, then back down at the man before him — someone he grew to consider a friend, someone who saved his life numerous times throughout this entire gruelling ordeal, and he feels mortified.

“I…I’m sorry, Isaac,” Carver speaks softly as he tucks the shockpoint drive under his arm and goes to pick his rifle back up. He tries to convey his remorse through his voice as best he possibly can. “But you’re wrong. We’re the only chance Earth has, I…I gotta get home. I gotta warn everyone.” 

Isaac goes to protest, but all that manages to escape his throat is another whimper and a cough that flecks more blood down his chin and across the floor. 

Carver has to force himself to look away now. He turns back and heads for the elevator at the corner of the room, which he knows will take him directly down to the ship’s reactor. 

The doors open and he glances back one last time. Isaac managed to drag himself several feet forward, towards Carver in his last ditch effort to pursue him. He’s lying on his stomach now, a trail of blood smeared behind him, an arm outstretched ahead of him, desperate to grasp something, anything, as he’s croaking Carver’s name while the beeping from his RIG becomes more frantic. A few seconds later there’s more coughing, then a small fit of futile, final gasps, and then he goes limp. The last bar of red on his RIG depletes. There’s the noise of flat-line. And then there’s the sound of distant electrical humming rushing in to fill the silence. 

With the realisation dawning on him, Carver finally snaps himself away and enters the elevator. It’s enough to make him doubt that this plan will actually work, that the reactor will charge the shockpoint drive, that he’ll be able to launch the ship and get home, that he’ll even be able to do any of that by himself. The ride down seems to take forever, the hologram projecting the floors of the ship ticking over and over and over and over and the noise starts to burrow into his head. 

Did he really just kill Isaac? Yes, but he had to — it was necessary, Isaac was losing it. He had to. They were the only chance of warning Earth of what was to come. Carver tries to focus on that, tries to rationalise that Isaac was only a hindrance, that he needed to be out of the way, that his mind was warped and he wasn’t thinking about any of this reasonably. Staying behind would inevitably doom everyone. But did he have to _kill_ him? Was that really the only way he could have retrieved the shockpoint drive? Was there truly no other option?

Was that really all Carver’s capable of?

The elevator comes to a sudden halt and Carver is jerked from his thoughts. He stands in the silence for a few seconds, feels the apprehension swirl around in his stomach and crawl up his throat. Will this work? Can he do this without Isaac? The doors open, and for a moment Carver’s blinded by a piercing orange light, before a throbbing pain constricts his head and he collapses to his knees, dropping his rifle and the shockpoint drive, squeezing his eyes shut and futilely grasping at his helmet. 

When he opens his eyes again he’s standing on a plateau bathed in red, surrounded by the cold, empty void of space, Markers towering above him and the bodies of the Tau Volantians littering the ground he’s standing on. There’s several voices, speaking all at once, low and emphatic, and when he looks up he realises who the voices belong to — the Brethren Moons. They’re telling him his chance to warn Earth has come and gone. He sees Earth, his home, big and bright and blue, and the massive, daunting visages of the Moons congregating around it, the creatures hanging over the planet like the blade of a guillotine, ready to descend and consume, be made whole. 

There’s the howling of what sounds like wind, and his vision is darkened and obscured. When it clears, the Moons and the plateau are gone, and he finds himself kneeling in the same room as he was in earlier. He steadily rises to his feet, tries to grasp what he’s seeing. He notices he doesn’t have the shockpoint drive anymore, and his eyes fall over the spot where he last saw Isaac. He’s not there. Carver begins to feel confusion wash over him, before he hears the sound of metal on metal as footsteps quickly approach him.

He turns to see Isaac, helmet engaged, weapon held in one arm and shockpoint drive tucked under the other. 

“Isaac!” Carver breathes, relief overwhelming him as Isaac comes to a stop beside him. “You’re alive! I…I thought that…”

“You were right, Carver. You were right,” Isaac says, and his voice is comforting. Carver almost doesn’t believe what he’s hearing. 

“They were just trying to slow us down,” Carver explains. “They knew where Earth was all along!” 

“Come on, we have to hurry! They’re headed there right now!” Isaac immediately goes to move past Carver, towards the elevator.

“W-wait, Isaac,” Carver says, as he grabs Isaac’s arm and tries to ease him back. Isaac can hear a kind of weariness, an uncertainty in his voice, and he turns to face him.

Carver disengages his helmet, and he looks to his approximation of where Isaac’s eyes are sitting behind his visor. 

“Take your helmet off for a second,” he says. 

Isaac doesn’t really think to question it, and does as he requests. 

Carver stares at him. The last time he saw him his face was pallid, streaked with blood, and his eyes were glassy and sunken — all his doing. Carver finds himself reaching a hand up to cup the side of his face just to feel it, to make sure it’s really there, that he’s really there. Isaac feels nonplussed for a second, but the incredulous look on Carver’s face tells him all he needs to know. He lets Carver cradle his face and it feels nice, those few moments of gentle contact. Isaac finds himself relaxing under the touch. 

Carver’s voice is quiet when he speaks again. “I did something. I mean, I…I thought I did something. To you. I had to, you were…you were gonna strand us here. I had to kill you. I thought I killed you.”

Carver removes his hand and Isaac’s left staring at him. Carver’s brow is furrowed with guilt, Isaac recognises, and he nods solemnly. 

“I know. But that doesn’t matter now. All that matters is getting this shock drive installed, and getting back to Earth.” 

There’s a pregnant pause before Isaac gently smacks the outside of Carver’s shoulder in a gesture of encouragement. Isaac smiles, and it’s comforting, and Carver smiles back, though he still feels that pang of regret sitting deep down in his stomach. 

Isaac reengages his helmet and turns to head towards the elevator, stopping to look back when he notices Carver isn’t following him, and waits by the doors. Carver takes a moment, then follows suit, reengaging his helmet and tailing Isaac. 

“Hey,” Carver begins when the doors open. He follows him inside. “We’re really doing this?”

“Yeah, Carver,” Isaac says. “We’re going home.”

**Author's Note:**

> you only hear the dialogue that references it during co-op but carver thinking he killed isaac during their "fight" in awakened lives in my head rent free


End file.
